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Serialization Primitives

Avalanche uses a simple, uniform, and elegant representation for all internal data. This document describes how primitive types are encoded on the Avalanche platform. Transactions are encoded in terms of these basic primitive types.

Byte

Bytes are packed as-is into the message payload.

Example:

Packing:
0x01
Results in:
[0x01]

Short

Shorts are packed in BigEndian format into the message payload.

Example:

Packing:
0x0102
Results in:
[0x01, 0x02]

Integer

Integers are 32-bit values packed in BigEndian format into the message payload.

Example:

Packing:
0x01020304
Results in:
[0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04]

Long Integers

Long integers are 64-bit values packed in BigEndian format into the message payload.

Example:

Packing:
0x0102030405060708
Results in:
[0x01, 0x02, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06, 0x07, 0x08]

IP Addresses

IP addresses are represented as 16-byte IPv6 format, with the port appended into the message payload as a Short. IPv4 addresses are padded with 12 bytes of leading 0x00s.

IPv4 example:

Packing:
"127.0.0.1:9650"
Results in:
[
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x00, 0x00, 0xff, 0xff, 0x7f, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01,
0x25, 0xb2,
]

IPv6 example:

Packing:
"[2001:0db8:ac10:fe01::]:12345"
Results in:
[
0x20, 0x01, 0x0d, 0xb8, 0xac, 0x10, 0xfe, 0x01,
0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x00,
0x30, 0x39,
]

Fixed-Length Array

Fixed-length arrays, whose length is known ahead of time and by context, are packed in order.

Byte array example:

Packing:
[0x01, 0x02]
Results in:
[0x01, 0x02]

Integer array example:

Packing:
[0x03040506]
Results in:
[0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06]

Variable Length Array

The length of the array is prefixed in Integer format, followed by the packing of the array contents in Fixed Length Array format.

Byte array example:

Packing:
[0x01, 0x02]
Results in:
[0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x02, 0x01, 0x02]

Int array example:

Packing:
[0x03040506]
Results in:
[0x00, 0x00, 0x00, 0x01, 0x03, 0x04, 0x05, 0x06]

String

A String is packed similarly to a variable-length byte array. However, the length prefix is a short rather than an int. Strings are encoded in UTF-8 format.

Example:

Packing:
"Avax"
Results in:
[0x00, 0x04, 0x41, 0x76, 0x61, 0x78]